Australian Standards for Editing Practice: Where to from here?
Next meeting
Committee changes
Treasurer's report in brief
The President's column
President's speech, AGM 2001
By the way
A weekend with Chesterton
The AGM dinner at Vivaldi
News and notes
On-screen editing course: a sight for sore eyes
Membership movements
Another blooper
Dates for your diary
Copyright notice
Be ready for the November meeting! This year it will be a family barbecue, not necessarily on the last Wednesday of November. Perhaps former members will join us as well. Watch the web site notice board, the email contact list and next month's newsletter to be sure you don't miss out.
Typography and fonts: fact and fiction, technical and design aspects for print and web
Simon Yates (of Graphic Ark) and Sharon France (of Looking Glass Press) will talk to the society about fonts, their design, the messages they convey, their effective use in documents, and problems that they can cause. Both speakers are experienced Canberra graphic designers working in print and electronic media.
Come to the Friends' Lounge at the National Library of Australia at 6 p.m. for chat and nibbles followed by the meeting at 6.30 p.m.
Elizabeth Murphy is the new president of our society, taking over this challenging job from Lee Kirwan. Anne Greiner is the society's new treasurer.
See below for Lee's farewell speech at the AGM and Elizabeth's first column as president.
This is part of the text of a talk to the Society of Editors (Victoria) at its AGM in July, given by Janet Mackenzie. Janet also says: 'the Standards have been very well received at Deakin University, which publishes its own materials for distance education and employs quite a few editors. Beryl Hill reports that the editorial department is planning to use the Standards to gain recognition of their skills and professionalism from the academic hierarchy - "they're just what we need". Beryl is also planning a new edition of The Australian Editing Handbook, and has asked permission to reprint the Standards as an appendix. Since it's used as a textbook in most editing courses, this will put the Standards in front of training providers and aspiring editors.'
The Australian Standards for Editing Practice have emerged at a critical time for the editing profession. We are at a crossroads. Either editors go forward to a bright future, with greater status and pay than we have ever had; or else we slip quietly into oblivion along with other casualties of a rapidly changing world, like Latin teachers and shorthand typists.
Three things arise from the Standards. The first and most obvious is the urgent need to press on with accreditation. Unless we can say, according to objective criteria, who is a competent practitioner and who is not, we can't expect to be taken seriously as a profession. Accreditation must be our top priority.
Secondly, the process of producing the Standards has exposed a structural weakness in the organisation of our profession: we have no effective, continuing national presence. CASE, the Council of Australian Societies of Editors, does its best, and of course I am not criticising individuals here. But CASE is made up of people who have many claims on their time: they have families and jobs, and they are also presidents of their State societies, so naturally CASE comes at the bottom of the list - a sort of lower CASE. We have to devise a means of presenting the editing profession effectively at a national level, even if it means levying ourselves and paying a part-time salary. This should be the first step towards a National Institute. I also urge individuals to develop a national awareness of the matters that concern the profession by periodically checking the other societies' websites, which generally show their newsletters.
Thirdly, I would like to see the Standards used as a launching pad for a major publicity campaign. We should do it properly: hire professional PR people as well as exploiting all our media contacts. But there is a difficulty here. The editing profession actually selects against people who like to put themselves forward. Editors are generally persons of a modest and retiring nature - it's part of our charm. But we're going to have to conquer our reluctance and blow our own trumpet and give ourselves a profile, so that everyone knows what an editor does and how extremely valuable and wonderful we are.
There's lots of scope for a PR campaign. Editing can be tied in with several issues that are matters of public debate: with literacy, with education, with the Knowledge Nation and the Knowledge Society, with the plain English campaign, with business productivity, and with all the problems of presenting information effectively on screen. There's plenty to work with. The world is awash with information, and editors are the people who can add value to that information and make it useful. We have to let the world know what we can do.
I have thought of two suggestions that might be incorporated into the PR campaign. One is the Australia Day Awards. If people can get awards for services to football, and public servants can get awards just for doing their job, I reckon we should get a piece of the action. Each State society should put up a name or two each year - for services to the printed word, or the English language, or educational publishing, or whatever - and we should keep putting names forward until we get a few gongs.
The second PR idea requires more work, but it would be a lot more fun: a national prize for the Worst-Edited Publication of the Year. Everyone says that good editing is invisible, but bad editing - or no editing - sticks out a mile. So let's be a bit confrontationist, and name and shame the organisations that are producing reader-hostile material, the ones that aren't employing us. We could have various categories: print and screen, and so on. The prize wouldn't focus so much on typos and grammar - everyone knows we do those - but on headings and captions and things that should be there but aren't, like a glossary or a map. The Standards provide a ready-made list of the knowledge that should be applied. If we do the whole thing with a sense of humour, the media will love it. Anyone interested in taking this idea further, please contact me.
Janet Mackenzie
jmack@mansfield.net.au
The complete 2000-2001 report and financial statements prepared by treasurer Marion Gilmour-Temu will soon be available on the society's web site. A brief précis is presented here.
The society's net assets were $11,358, with $2722 in current assets, $9066 in a term deposit and $430 in liabilities. The opening balance for the year was $17,389.
Total income for the year was $6695 and total expenditure was $12,726. Income from members' subscriptions and bank interest totalled $4287. Other income, from the end of year dinner and training, was exceeded by the costs of those activities.
Expenditure included $1915 on the editors' and indexers' joint conference. Income from the conference had not been estimated when the society's accounts were finalised, so the expected return [about $6000] cannot be recognised as income in these financial statements. Costs of CASE and national liaison amounted to $1234 during the 2000-2001 financial year. The newsletter cost $3215 in printing and postage, and general meetings cost $1871 for catering and speakers.
Alison Chinn, CPA, audited the financial statements and concluded that they present fairly the society's assets, liabilities, income and expenditure, in accordance with the requirements of the constitution of the society.
My first column following the Annual General Meeting on 26 September - the words mirror those of our departing President, Lee Kirwan, when she wrote her final column for last month's edition of The Canberra Editor.
This is my first column as President - writing it is one of the bonuses attaching to this challenging position. I couldn't manage without the support of the rest of the committee - new and continuing members. Thank you to departing committee members Lee Kirwan, Marion Gilmour-Temu, Mary Newport and soon Pete Martensz, all of whom have contributed enormously to the society. Welcome to new committee members Anne Greiner, Helen Topor and Kerry MacDermott. We four newcomers will learn the ropes together and help to keep the flag flying, both on local issues and issues of national importance through CASE.
CASE meets later this month in Sydney, and our society will be represented by Vice-President Ed Highley. This is a long-awaited meeting which should set the tone for some real action on major issues including accreditation.
I should tell you a bit about me. I am a linguist by academic training with a penchant for clear writing. I have written some books about effective writing and office skills, taught linguistics and writing in universities, colleges and workplaces in Australia and overseas, and done my bit as an editor of public documents to try to make manuals, forms and instructions clear to those who have to use them. During my term, I would like to see more and closer liaison between the individual societies of editors. Accreditation is a vital issue for our future, and I hope this will cause us to work as one to achieve nation-wide criteria for accreditation of editors.
Members who came to the dinner following our AGM were treated to something special at Vivaldi Restaurant. If you couldn't make it, don't despair - there will be an opportunity to join me and our guest speakers for October at 'La Rustica', Kennedy Street, Kingston - a return visit to a restaurant we have enjoyed before.
Our guest speakers for 31 October will be Simon Yates and Sharon France, two Canberra graphic designers, both of whom lecture or have lectured at the ANU or the University of Canberra. They will talk to us about aspects of fonts - design, which to use when, problems that can arise with them, how to get them, etc. This is a topic of special interest in this age of desktop publishing with its pitfalls for enthusiastic authors and potholes for unwary editors.
Elizabeth M. Murphy
At the society's 10th Annual General Meeting on 26 September, at Vivaldi Restaurant, ANU, our president for 2000-01, Lee Kirwan, handed over the reins. This is the text of her talk.
What an interesting year! It's been one of variety, of accomplishment in some fields and of change in others.
We've had an assortment of speakers at our meetings: Gregg Borschmann and his passion for the bush; Anna Gray speaking about her editorial work on the wicked Donald Friend diaries, shortly after taking up her position as Curator of Australian Art at the National Gallery. Who could forget Tom Frame, who, in spite of his distrust of publishers and his new position as Anglican Bishop to the Defence Forces, continues to write as though driven? Or Gail McCallum and Ashley Hay from Duffy and Snellgrove? Iain Brown, the accomplished moderator of the global lists that comprise the Electric Editors blew in from the UK, but we discovered that he was Australian and not nearly as advanced in years as his impressive CV suggests. And finally, there was Julian Cribb, a science communicator with a very solid background in journalism who rose from his sick bed to stir the possum.
The really big wins for the year, the ones to yodel about, were delivered by joint efforts and sound teamwork.
After some careful deliberation and some very democratic consultation, a subcommittee of the Council of Australian Societies of Editors presented us with the Australian Standards for Editing Practice, which have now been published and widely put about. Not all of you keep copies of this slim volume by your beds as a source of evening reading but I do recommend that it becomes a work bible, along with your style manuals and dictionaries and texts on grammar and punctuation. Loma Snooks, with her reputation for professional excellence and commitment to the task, was our representative on the standards working group. The standards themselves will be reviewed at regular intervals, to keep pace with technical advancements but the ground-breaking work is over. What we need to do right now is make sure they are widely publicised and used.
In its own way, the joint conference of editors and indexers was a first because of its national overtones and, indeed, the large interstate audience it attracted. Each State and Territory was represented - particularly gratifying when distance, and the concomitant expense, were factored in.
Our conference committee of four - Louise Forster, Pam Hewitt, Margaret Pender and myself - joined five members of the Society of Indexers ACT Region Branch and took on complete organisation of the event. Louise hunted for sponsors and keynote speakers; Pam Hewitt, whom we will reluctantly bequeath to the NSW society of editors in a few months, was responsible for the excellent program; I handled publicity and promotion with a miniscule budget; and Margaret lent a hand with a wide variety of tasks. I do not forget Ann Milligan, who was too modest to claim membership of the organising committee, but who, together with Pete Martensz and Alexa McLaughlin put together a most impressive special issue of the newsletter for the event. The hard work paid off and the CSE now has an extra $6000 to look forward to when the final accounts for the year are completed. However, I doubt that any of us would willingly organise another conference for at least a decade - if ever!
When I started these notes, the only disappointment of this year from my point of view was the apparent failure of the various editing societies to capitalise on the opportunity for the Council of Australian Societies of Editors to meet in Sydney and press on with plans for the future - particularly in the area of accreditation. May became August, and August too disappeared. However, more recently, the redoubtable Renée Otmar and Janet Mackenzie from Victoria have shifted into gear and put together a draft agenda for this long-awaited CASE meeting. I urge the 2001-2002 committee to support this push, to choose the society's representative/s and to keep networking and nagging until there are further results.
Changes during the year have been moderate. We have noted the need to tighten up entry into the full membership category of the society and have revised the application form accordingly. We are about to publish a new printed version of the freelance register without charge to those who submit entries. This is a one-off service to the membership as there is a proven demand for the register. Finally, we have decided to have our annual dinner as part of the AGM, like many other societies, so that younger members of CSE and their families can enjoy the flies at a good Aussie barbecue around Christmas.
My thanks indeed to individual members of this year's committee: to Ed Highley, a wise, thoughtful and helpful Vice President; to Marion Gilmour-Temu, who has been a wonderful Treasurer for the last two years - accurate, competent, well-organised and vigilant.
I speak with the voice of experience when I say that the position of newsletter editor and compiler is not only one of the most responsible ones in the society but also one of the most demanding. Ann Milligan has been a powerhouse of ideas (there have been times when I have wondered if she has an 'off' button at all) and I'm sure you would agree that she has produced some excellent issues of the Canberra Editor in 2000-2001.
Ann Parkinson has scribed most competently at both committee and general meetings and has taken on the additional task of 'dinner mistress'. Her persistence ensured that a satisfying number of CSE members attended the last end-of-year dinner and after an onerous taste-test (which required the cooperation of Chris's wallet) she has brought us here tonight.
Peter Judge continues to reap accolades for his, or rather our, excellent web site - one of the most informative and best maintained around.
Pete Martensz, who has kept the database with great accuracy and who took over the layout of the newsletter near the end of 1999, has decided to take a step back after years of simply invaluable work for the committee and the society. We are much in his debt; as we are, also, to Mary Newport who was training coordinator for some years before taking on the job of publicising the society's meetings and welcoming new members. Mary's commitment and reliability have been great assets.
Margaret Pender was willing to take on the important task of collating entries for the new edition of the printed freelance register, which, as I said earlier, will be much in demand.
The April conference provided some excellent short-course training opportunities, so Claudia Marchesi and Cathy Nicoll arranged only one course up to July. However, they're now back in harness and full of ideas for the rest of this year and, I believe, the next one as well. An excellent team.
My thanks also to Alexa McLaughlin who has helped Ann with the newsletter, and to Jenny Cook who has fortified us before each meeting with her delicious 'small eats'.
Finally, thank you all for having me in the head prefect's chair during the past year. It has been a privilege to sit there.
And now, the real stuff of the AGM: the announcement of the new committee for the year ahead. I'm pleased to congratulate your new President, Elizabeth Murphy who comes with a wealth of professional experience under her belt. Anne Greiner, one of those people who treats time like a piece of elastic, is elected unopposed to the position of Treasurer. We think we have secured a volunteer to desktop the newsletter from January next year and Peter Judge has agreed to take over the membership database once again while he continues as webmaster. Helen Topor will fill Mary Newport's shoes, placing the good word about our meetings with the media and making sure that new members are made welcome. The rest of the committee remains the same but has increased by one, with the inclusion of Kerry MacDermott. Please congratulate this new committee and support it whenever you can.
Lee Kirwan
What has the demolition by terrorists of two New York buildings got to do with a large editing job for a client in Canberra being undertaken jointly by me and a colleague in Melbourne?
Quite a lot, as it happens. The server for my colleague's Internet access is now buried in ruins under the rubble of one of those buildings, making it temporarily impossible for us to exchange large documents by our usual route.
We worked around the problem very quickly and will complete the editing task on time. The Canberra client will never know that anything went wrong.
I write this, not to add to the plethora of words about the New York tragedy, but to highlight the fact that editing isn't always just sitting at a computer and fiddling with words. The project management aspect of the editing task often has to cope with the totally unforeseen and, increasingly in this uncertain world, the editor needs to know how to cope with sudden changes in circumstances.
As they say, 'it goes with the territory'.
Elizabeth M. Murphy
Admirers of G.K. Chesterton gathered in Sydney on the Labour Day weekend to explore and celebrate the words and wisdom of one of the great writers of the twentieth century. The occasion, the second national conference of the Australian Chesterton Society, was graced by the presence of Lord Alton who flew out from London especially to deliver the keynote address.
Chesterton was noted for the clarity of his writing and the ability to express truths in the most concrete and accessible of images thus deepening our understanding of the human experience. Often referred to as the apostle of commonsense and the defender of the ordinary man, he had a profound influence on luminaries such as T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, Marshall McLuhan, Mahatma Gandhi and Graham Greene.
A feature of the conference proceedings was the re-enactment of the famous debate between Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw, with Hilaire Belloc in the chair.
Papers presented by Chesterton experts and aficionados focused on his various talents as author, poet, literary critic, journalist, debater and broadcaster. In the 1920s and early 1930s when radio was the major all-pervading mass medium (it reached across all classes to a greater extent than newspapers), he was a dominant voice in British broadcasting. His talks were mostly about books and authors. He believed, however, that life itself was far more astounding than anything we write in its course.
His written output was prolific, estimated at 15 million words, spanning 4000 essays, some 100 books, with contributions to 200 more and the publication of his own literary journal, G.K.'s Weekly. Most of his works are still in print. He aimed for simplicity and directness in highly energised prose. Such was his fluency with words that he could write an essay in longhand while at the same time dictating another essay to his secretary.
As one speaker put it, he also 'delighted in pricking the balloon of pomposity' and was master of the epigram, the aphorism and the artful use of paradox. Some examples: 'Silence is the unbearable repartee'; 'Modern man has not lost his way; he has lost his ideas; modern man has become all windows and no house'; 'Tradition ... is the democracy of the dead'; 'Gibbon is now a classic, that is, he is quoted instead of being read'; 'No man must be superior to the things that are common to men; not only are we all in the same boat, but we are all seasick'; 'An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered; an inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered'; 'A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author'.
Chesterton had a massive mind in a massive body, weighing some 136 kilos (due to an incurable genetic malady). A man of eccentricities, he dressed in a cape and large hat and carried a swordstick (a rapier held within a walking cane) that he flourished as he walked or used to make a point. For him it was a symbol and an instrument of his ability to harmonise the visual and the verbal…'an elongated finger, an extra leg'.
Chesterton knew well what Samuel Johnson said well: 'The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new'.
Humour was an essential ingredient in much of what he wrote ('unless a man is in part a humorist, he is only in part a man'), so it is appropriate to finish with these lines from 'Wine and Water':
And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine,
'I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine'.
Mary Newport
Two presidents - Elizabeth Murphy and Lee Kirwan - cut the birthday cake
What a great evening it was! And it was the Society's 10th birthday as well - hence the birthday cake, which the outgoing and incoming presidents cut with all due solemnity. Congratulations to Ann Parkinson and President Lee for the bright idea of combining an AGM with a dinner in such a delightful venue. And congratulations to the committee members who made it work so smoothly and well. Congratulations also to all those who attended, for ensuring that the business of the AGM was conducted so expeditiously and that the dinner was such an enjoyable occasion. Vivaldi had to be an inspired choice of restaurant: the staff were attentive, the food was first class and the wine … well, most of us brought our own, so if it wasn't up to standard we knew who to blame.
Ann Milligan put it beautifully: 'I certainly enjoyed the dinner, and everyone else appeared to, too. I had dessert, which was excellent, as well as the birthday cake. Greedy, I'm afraid. My zucchini puffs were terrific and so was the salmon something-or-other. Servings were of a good size for me, not too big or small. Great company, happy atmosphere.'
And who would have argued with sentiments like those?
Peter Judge
For information on viruses that is useful and up-to-date and authoritative, Sandra Green, writing on the society's email discussion list recently, recommends www.symantec.com/techsupp/. In response, Peter Judge has contributed two other addresses: first, www.symantec.com/avcenter/, which he says is a bit more general in its coverage; and also www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html, a good site to check when people send emails warning (falsely) of dreadful viruses.
Margaret Pender reports that the freelance register is about ready for formatting. There are 59 entries, including people who are on the society's web page. Registrants can expect to see proof copies of their entries soon.
On 24 October, from 2 to 4 p.m., Queensland writer Venero Armanno will conduct a Novel Writing workshop. Venero is the author of a number of novels including Firehead. Then on 27 October, from 2 to 4 p.m., there will be a Freelance Writing workshop with Francesca Rendle-Short at the ACT Writers Centre. Learn how to generate work for yourself and issue invoices. And on 11 November, from 2 to 4 p.m., SpringLit will feature Lesley Fowler, Neil Drinnan, Clive Faro and Sherridan Linnell at the Kurrajong Hotel, sponsored by ACT Writers Centre. Contact the ACT Writers Centre, phone 6262 9191, for details of these events.
Many training sessions provided by the society have been very useful. Claudia and Cathy are to be thanked for organising the excellent one day session on 29 September. Participants were educated in the use of Microsoft Word 97 as an editor's on-screen tool. We learned much that was new and useful in the use of this word processing package.
The presenter of this course was Brett Lockwood, the training officer of the Society of Editors (Victoria), who arrived from Melbourne notwithstanding the chaos caused by the Ansett debacle. A comprehensive outline of notes was presented to all participants - an important adjunct to this course, as time was a limiting factor to the number of topics discussed. Discussion centred on some general settings to optimise Word for editorial work, the document size, use of the find and replace commands and setting style definitions and use of templates. Brett supplied an additional guide to proofreading electronically edited documents.
Brett's web site is worth investigating for an outline of the course and other useful information. The site is www.WordBytes.com.au and his email contact is brett@wordbytes.com.au.
Pete Martensz
The Society welcomes Anne Pyle as a new associate member this month and Helen Dormer, Philippa Carron, Roger Bacon, Sarah Logan and Victoria Beer as new full members.
Helen Dormer teaches editing at Chisholm TAFE in Victoria and previously freelanced for a number of years. Philippa (Pippa) Carron is a freelance editor specialising in health and biotechnology, with experience in Senate committee work. Roger Bacon works in-house at the Department of Defence, editing public sector personnel legislation and manuals. Sarah Logan is an editor of Hansard, and Victoria Beer is editing House at Work for the Parliamentary Education Office.
Helen Topor found this while reading the Wordsmith email discussion list:
Lucille Keene, a veteran journalist, commented that she was left incredulous, outraged but laughing at the mental picture brought forward by a young reporter's interview with an official about some crime in the neighbourhood. 'Trying to convince the readers that she would follow up on the story and let them know the details ... she claimed that she would be ''keeping a breast out'' for future [developments].'
31 October: Society's October meeting
late November: End-of-year meeting and barbecue
The Canberra Editor is published by the Canberra Society of Editors, PO Box 3222, Manuka ACT 2603. Copyright: Canberra Society of Editors 2001. ISSN 1039-3358
The deadline for the next regular issue is
5 November.
Mail contributions on a 3.5 inch disk, using Word for Windows
(essential) or email (preferable) to:
Ann Milligan
Science Text Processors Canberra
PO Box 3161, Belconnen MDC, ACT 2617
phone/fax: (02) 6259 3080
email: scientex@actonline.com.au
If mailing, always provide a printout as well.
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